Moleskine Opens on University Place

Big news: The Food Emporium at 14th and Broadway will die in 2023 and be replaced by a new branch of Target. It’s interesting to note how few “old-fashioned” supermarkets are surviving in this neighbo

Have you noticed that many dry cleaners, including the one on 13th closest to our building, are now billing themselves as “organic?” What does that really mean. Not much in reality. Click here to read an article and watch a video report.

The new tenant in the old Foxy Lady space on 14th St. will be GameStop.

Don’t be fooled by its name. The new $850-per-night boutique hotel The Twenty Two is actually located at 16 East 16th St. It will also feature a restaurant and a members-only club. Another upscale addition to the area.

The Center for Jewish Society, at 15 East 16th St., will be presenting a very special exhibit, beginning on January 27th.

For the first time in history, the Anne Frank House will present a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam to immerse visitors in a full-scale recreation of the Annex, where Anne Frank, her parents and sister, and four other Jewish inhabitants spent two years hiding to evade Nazi capture.

Anne Frank The Exhibition gives visitors of all ages the chance to learn about Anne Frank, not as a victim but through the multifaceted lens of her life—as a girl, a writer, and a symbol of resilience and strength. More than 100 original collection items from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, including several never-before-exhibited artifacts, help to convey the context that shaped Anne’s life, death and posthumous fame. Her diary is one of the most translated books in the world.

Order tickets here. 

Our new neighbor Ann Roth tells us about this incredible image of the 14th St. building that she dug up:

“I found the image on the web, where someone was selling a hand-colored print of the 14th Street facade, from a magazine that dates to 1891. So it clearly dates to that year (or earlier), not 1899, as all the real estate ads say. I ordered it, and they immediately took it off their site, so I can’t send you the link, but I copied the image first, so I’ve attached it. I must say, I wish it still had the fancy spire. The architects were D’Oench & Simon. Albert D’Oench studied in New York and Stuttgart, and then worked for Robert Morris Hunt (who designed the Metropolitan Museum’s facade) for a while. He was the NY Inspector of Buildings for five years, which seems to have mainly involved fire safety. After that, he had a successful architectural partnership with Albert (or Bernard?) Simon, and they designed and built several fire stations in New York. D’Oench later married the mayor’s daughter. Clearly a man with good connections. The plan calls it a “store building,” built it for Mrs. Mary S. Van Beuren, who was the granddaughter and heir of Henry Spingler (who I think has a building on Union Square named after him). She lived nearby, on 14th Street, just west of 5th, and seems to have been a bit of a sharp customer, to judge from some of the legal tussles I found when I searched her name on Google.”